#BOTY 2018: Day 3
On the 3rd day of Christmas my true love sent to me, I’m running to win by Ann Kemel 😉
every morning, I wake up with a prayer:
“Jesus, I am just Ann. My city is so big.
Make me creative, give me ideas for my corner of the world”
I’m running to win is a very intimate glimpse into the daily journal of Ann Kiemel as she prepared herself for a major challenge and daily confronts the realitys of faithfulness, in running and in life.
Have you ever questioned why you do what you do? Why you write? Why you run? Why you design? Why you do accounting? Fair and fine most of the reasons might be “because I am good at it” but is there not more to life? Does my reason for doing what I do simply end on “because I can or because I can do it?” Just the other day in our blogging group ~B said “I write to be immortal” that touched me, “I write to be immortal” and I asked myself a simple question as well, why do I write? You know you don’t have to be deep with answers all the time it can be a simple reason like Ann Kiemel “I’m running to win” but you see the thing is she didn’t mean winning athletic races only, she meant in life as well, she also meant in her walk with God. This book is about faithfulness when preparing yourself, the diligence, there is a part where she just says “o God make me faithful” cause it can be hard. She says
Faithfulness turns out like that. It pays
Even years and years away
God never forgets tiny seed places deep in
Human hearts where visions are born and rooted not ever.
She writes about her struggles, her joys, her pain, her shame.
There are a whole lot of things she writes about, how she prepared for the Boston Marathon in just 6 months and for her this was the biggest race of her life and coming from a totally non athletic family and she had never been a runner and was 34 years old. But she had that tiny seed of a dream, though she knew there was the definite possibility of failure, of suffering and vulnerability, being misunderstood and falling short of the goal but she pressed on. Disciplined her mind, body and spirit and it wasn’t easy. There is a time she just said
“o God I really hate this.
I hate to run”
Cause it was freezing cold, her body was aching lol and the dream was heavy. When you start it seems easy then you realise your life has to completely turn around. Sometimes I hate writing too cause of the discipline that comes with it, sometimes it’s just cause creativity eludes me and I think to myself I have already started this thing and I think to myself what the hell did I get myself into. It’s nice to spill my thoughts and feelings on paper, to simply and honestly say this is me, this is who I am, how I struggle and how I am just human.
To quote her one last time
Life is only as powerful as its moments.
A great life is not the result of a lot of money…
Or smashing success or prominence.
It is great only in terms of how many significant moments there have been.
Don’t forget about the moments, live for the moments, don’t only live for the big events.
